Arch of Triumph (47 page)

THE CAR STOPPED
at the corner of the Rue Vaugirard. “What’s the matter?” Ravic asked.

“A parade of demonstrators.” The driver did not look back. “Communists, this time.”

Ravic looked at Kate Hegstroem. Small and frail, she sat in her corner in the costume of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Louis XIV. Her face was heavily powdered. In spite of that it gave an impression of pallor. The bones stood out at the temples and cheeks.

“Not bad,” he said. “July, 1939, a Fascist demonstration by the Croix de Feu five minutes ago, now one by the Communists—and we two in costumes of the great seventeenth century. Not bad, Kate.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She smiled.

Ravic looked down at his escarpins. The irony of the situation was great. He didn’t have to add the reflection that any policeman might arrest him.

“Shall I try another street?” Kate Hegstroem’s chauffeur asked.

“You can’t turn now,” Ravic said. “There are too many cars behind us.”

The demonstrators walked quietly through the street at right angles to theirs. They carried banners and placards. Nobody sang. A great number of policemen escorted the procession. At the corner of the Rue Vaugirard, unnoticed, stood another group of policemen. They had bicycles with them. One of them was patrolling the street. He looked into Kate Hegstroem’s car. Without altering his expression he moved on.

Kate Hegstroem saw Ravic’s look. “He isn’t surprised,” she said. “He knows. The police know everything. The ball at the Monforts’ is the event of the summer. The house and garden will be surrounded by police.”

“That puts me completely at ease.”

Kate Hegstroem smiled. She knew nothing of Ravic’s situation. “That many jewels won’t be assembled very soon again in Paris. Real costumes with real jewels. The police won’t take any chances. There will be some detectives among the guests too.”

“In costume?”

“Possibly. Why?”

“It’s just as well to know. I planned to steal the Rothschild emeralds.”

Kate Hegstroem screwed the window down. “It bores you, I know. But that won’t help you this time.”

“It doesn’t bore me, Kate. On the contrary. I wouldn’t have known what else to do. Will there be enough to drink?”

“I think so. But I can give the head butler a hint. I know him fairly well.”

One could hear the footsteps of the demonstrators on the pavement. They were not marching. They walked in disorder. It sounded as if a tired herd were passing by.

“Which century would you like to live in, Ravic, if you could choose?”

“In this one. Otherwise I’d be dead and some idiot would be wearing my costume to this party.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, in which would you like to live your life over again.”

Ravic looked at the sleeve of his costume. “Just the same,” he said. “In ours. It is the lousiest, bloodiest, most corrupt, colorless, cowardly, and dirty so far—but nevertheless.”

“I wouldn’t.” Kate Hegstroem pressed her hands together as if chilled. The soft brocade glittered at her slim wrists. “In this one,” she said. “In the seventeenth. Or in an earlier one. In any—only not in ours. I have known this for only a few months. I never thought about it before.” She pulled the window all the way down. “How hot it is! And how humid! Isn’t the demonstration over yet?”

“Yes, that’s the end coming over there.”

A shot was fired; it came from the direction of the Rue Cambronne. The next moment the policemen at the corner were on their bicycles. A woman screamed. The crowd answered with a sudden rumbling. People were beginning to run. The policemen stepped on their pedals and rode into the crowd, swinging their clubs.

“What was that?” Kate Hegstroem asked, frightened.

“Nothing. A tire bursting.”

The chauffeur turned around. His face had changed. “That—”

“Drive on,” Ravic interrupted him. “You can get through now.” The intersection was free as if a gust had swept it bare. “Go on!” Ravic said.

Screams came from the Rue Cambronne. A second shot was fired. The chauffeur drove on.

———

They were standing on the terrace overlooking the garden. Every place was filled with costumes by then. In the deep dusk of trees roses were in bloom. Candles protected by shades gave a warm flickering light. In a pavilion a small orchestra was playing a minuet. It all looked like a Watteau that had come to life.

“Lovely?” Kate Hegstroem asked.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Kate. At least from a distance.”

“Come. Let’s walk through the garden.”

Under the high old trees an unreal picture unfolded. The uncertain light of the many candles shimmered on silver and gold brocade, on precious faded blue and pink and sea-green velvets, its soft illumination fell on full-bottomed wigs and bare, powdered shoulders around which played the delicate glitter of violins. Couples and groups wandered slowly through the alleys, hilts sparkled, a fountain splashed, and the trimmed boxwood hedges formed a dark stylized background.

Ravic noticed that even the servants were in costumes. He took for granted then that the detectives would be too. It wouldn’t be bad, he thought, to be arrested by Molière or Racine. Or by a court dwarf, for a change.

He looked up. A warm heavy raindrop had fallen on his hand. The red sky had darkened. “It’s going to rain, Kate,” he said.

“No. That’s impossible. The garden—”

“It is! Come quickly!”

He took her arm and hurried her to the terrace. Hardly were they there when it began to pour. The water streamed down, the candles went out in their chimneys, after a few seconds the table decorations hung like colorless rags, and panic broke out. Marquises, duchesses, and ladies-in-waiting dashed toward the terrace
with upraised brocade gowns; dukes, excellencies, and field marshals tried to protect their wigs and jostled one another in confusion like scared, many-colored chickens. Water poured into collars and décolletages, washing away powder and rouge, and a pale flash of lightning flooded the garden with insubstantial light, followed by the loud rattling of thunder.

Kate Hegstroem stood motionless under the awning of the terrace, pushed close to Ravic. “This never happened before,” she said, disconcerted. “I have been here often. This has never happened before. Not in any year.”

“A fine chance to get the emeralds.”

“Yes. My God—”

Servants in raincoats were running through the garden with umbrellas. Their satin stockings stuck out strangely from under their coats. They accompanied the last lost wet ladies-in-waiting to the terrace and then they went to look for lost scarves and things. One of them carried a pair of golden shoes. They were graceful and he held them carefully in his large hands. Water poured down on the empty tables. It thundered upon the taut awning as if heaven were beating an unknown reveille with crystal drumsticks.

“Let’s go inside,” Kate Hegstroem said.

The rooms in the house were much too small for the number of guests. Apparently no one had reckoned with bad weather. The stifling heat of the day still lay heavy in the rooms. The crowd added to the heat. The ample costumes of the ladies were crumpled. Silk trains had been torn beneath trampling feet. One could barely move.

Ravic was standing next to the door with Kate Hegstroem. Before him a buxom Marquise de Montespan with wet, plaited hair
was catching her breath. Around her neck, which had enlarged pores, hung a necklace of pear-shaped diamonds. Now she looked like a wet grocery woman at a carnival. Beside her a bald-headed man without a chin was coughing. Ravic recognized him. It was Blancher from the Foreign Office in the costume of Colbert. Two beautiful slender women, with profiles like greyhounds, stood before him; at their side a Jewish baron, fat and loud, with a jewel-studded hat, was fondling their shoulders appreciatively. A few South Americans, disguised as pages, watched him attentively and with astonishment. Between them stood the Countess Bellin as La Vallière, with the face of a fallen angel and many rubies. Ravic recalled that he had removed her ovaries two years ago on Durant’s diagnosis. This was altogether Durant’s clientele.

The smell of rain. The deadening, oppressive sultriness mingled with the scent of perfume, of skin, and of wet hair. The faces, washed by rain, were naked under the wigs more than if they had been without costumes. Ravic looked about. He saw much beauty around him; he saw also wit and skeptical shrewdness; but his eyes were trained to recognize as well the least sign of disease and he could not easily be deceived by a perfect surface. He knew that a certain class of society throughout the centuries remained the same; but he also knew what fever and decay were and he knew their symptoms. Lukewarm promiscuity; tolerance of weakness; impotent derision; cleverness without discretion; wit for wit’s sake; blood that was tired out, that had squandered its sparkle in irony, in little adventures, in petty greed, in polished fatalism, and dreary aimlessness. The world would not be saved by these, he thought. But by whom?

He looked at Kate Hegstroem. “You won’t get anything to drink,” she said. “The servants won’t be able to get through.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Gradually they were pushed into the next room. Tables with champagne, quickly brought in and set up, were standing along the wall.

Somewhere a few chandeliers were on. In their soft glow the lightning from outside flashed, momentarily snatching faces into a livid, ghostlike, instant’s death. Then thunder rolled and drowned out the voices and reigned and threatened until the soft light came back again and with it life and the stifling heat.

Ravic pointed at the tables with champagne. “Shall I get you some of that?”

“No. It’s too hot.” Kate Hegstroem looked at him. “Well, this is my party.”

“Maybe it’ll stop raining soon.”

“No. And even if it does—it’s spoiled. You know what I’d like? To get away—”

“So would I. This is like the time before the French Revolution. One expects the sans-culottes any minute.”

It took them a long time to reach the exit. Afterward Kate Hegstroem’s costume looked as if she had slept in it for hours. Outside, the rain was coming down heavy and straight. The buildings opposite looked as if they were behind the water-flooded window of a florist’s shop.

The car rolled up. “Where do you want to go?” Ravic asked. “Back to your hotel?”

“Not yet. But we can’t go anywhere else in these costumes. Let’s drive around for a while.”

“Good.”

The car glided slowly through the Paris night. The rain beat upon the top and drowned out almost all other noises. The Arc de Triomphe emerged, gray in the silver downpour, and disappeared.
The Champs Elysées with its lighted windows slipped by. The Rond Point smelled of flowers and freshness, a gay-colored wave amid the uproar. Wide as the ocean dawned the Place de la Concorde with its Tritons and sea monsters. The Rue de Rivoli swam closer, with its bright arcades, a fleeting glimpse of Venice, before the Louvre arose, gray and eternal, with its unending courtyard, all its windows dark. Then the quays, the bridges, swaying, unreal, in the gentle rain. Lighters, a towboat with a warm light, as comforting as if it concealed a thousand homes. The Seine, the boulevards, with busses, noise, people, and shops. The iron fences of the Luxembourg, the garden behind them like a poem by Rilke. The Cimetière Montparnasse, silent, forsaken. The narrow old streets, pushed close together, houses, silent squares surprisingly opening themselves, with trees, warped façades, churches, weatherworn monuments. Street lights flickering in the rain, pissoirs rising out of the earth like little forts, the side-streets of hotels where one could rent rooms by the hour, and in between the streets of the past, in pure rococo and baroque, the fronts of their buildings smiling down, shadowy doors as in the novels of Proust—

Kate Hegstroem sat in her corner and was silent. Ravic smoked. He saw the glow of the cigarette, but he did not taste its smoke. It was as if he were smoking an insubstantial cigarette in the dark of the car, and gradually everything seemed to become unreal—this ride, this soundless car in the rain, these streets passing by, in the corner this silent woman in her costume across which reflections flitted, these hands already marked by death and lying motionless on the brocade as if they would never move again—it was a ghostlike ride through a ghostlike Paris, strangely transfused by half-finished thoughts and an unuttered and meaningless farewell.

He thought of Haake. He tried to deliberate what he would do. He thought of the woman with the red-golden hair on whom he had operated. He thought of a rainy evening in Rothenburg ob der
Tauber with a woman he had forgotten, of the Hotel Eisenhut, and of a violin out of an unknown window. He recalled Romberg who was shot in 1917 during a thunderstorm on a field of poppies in Flanders—a thunderstorm that in ghostlike fashion had roared into the machine-gun fire as though God had become tired of man and had begun to fire upon the earth. He thought of an accordion, wailing and bad and full of unbearable yearning, played by a member of the marine battalion in Houthoulst; Rome in the rain flashed through his mind, a wet road behind Rouen; the endless November rain on the roofs of the barracks in the concentration camp; dead Spanish peasants in whose open mouths water had gathered; Claire’s moist clear face before she died; the way to the university at Heidelberg with the heavy scent of lilacs—a magic lantern of the past, an endless procession of pictures from the past, gliding by him like the streets outside, poison and comfort in one—